Monday, December 31, 2012

Steve Mandel's hedge fund firm Lone Pine Capital recently filed a 13G with the SEC during the holidays on shares of TripAdvisor (TRIP). Per the filing, Lone Pine has revealed a 5% ownership stake in TRIP with 6,523,653 shares.

This marks around a 13% increase in their position size since the end of the third quarter. The 13G was filed due to portfolio activity on December 12th.

It's also worth flagging that John Malone's Liberty Media (LMCA) recently bought a big slug of TripAdvisor as well. Barry Diller sold his stake to Liberty for $62.50 a share (a 40% premium at the time). This transaction gave Liberty 57% of the company's voting shares.

Per Google Finance, TripAdvisor is "an online travel research company, enabling users to plan and have a trip. TripAdvisor features reviews and advice on hotels, resorts, flights, vacation rentals, vacation packages and travel guides. TripAdvisor’s travel research platform features reviews and opinions from its community of travelers about destinations, accommodations (hotels, bed and breakfasts, specialty lodging and vacation rentals), restaurants and activities worldwide, through its TripAdvisor brand."

Highlighting some relevant SEC filings from over the holidays, we wanted to flag a series of Form 4's and an amended 13G filed by Larry Robbins' hedge fund firm Glenview Capital on Health Management Associates (HMA).

Per the filings, Glenview has revealed over a 13% stake in HMA with 34,059,503 shares. Around two weeks ago, Glenview purchased 5,430,227 HMA shares at prices between $9 and $9.19. This marks almost a 33% increase in their position size since the end of the third quarter.

While those share prices are weighted averages from the SEC filings, HMA is largely still trading around those levels now.

Earlier this month, HMA was profiled on an episode of CBS' show "60 Minutes," which called into question the company's admission policies. HMA defended itself ahead of the investigative journalism piece that aired.

Playing catch up after the holidays, we wanted to make sure everyone had a chance to see Bill Ackman's presentation on his latest short position: Herbalife (HLF).

The Pershing Square Capital Management CEO gave the pitch at a recent special Ira Sohn event. In a very thorough and detailed presentation (334 slides), Ackman labels the multilevel marketing company a pyramid scheme.

Making the media rounds after his presentation concluded, Ackman noted that he has an "enormous" short position, over 20 million shares and that they began shorting around 7 months ago. While HLF shares originally plummeted from around $40 down to $25 on news of Ackman's short, they've since rebounded up to $32.

Some readers may recall that we also previously flagged when Greenlight Capital's David Einhorn surfaced on an Herbalife earnings call and started asking questions. His brief cameo caused the stock to plummet on sheer speculation that he was going to short the company.

There still has been no word from Einhorn whether he is long, short, or not involved at all in the name. Ackman also commented in a recent media appearance that he had not spoken to Einhorn about the HLF position.

Embedded below is Ackman's presentation on Herbalife (HLF) entitled, "Who wants to be a Millionaire?"

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